More than 1.019 trillion business documents are printed, faxed, or copied in the United States annually. That is a lot of paper to keep track of, and a lot of paper to potentially lose. According to the Wall Street Journal, the average American business worker loses 1.5 hours per day searching for misplaced files or documents in messy file cabinets and desks. This problem is solvable by using a digital filing system.

To create a digital filing system you will need a scanner, a computer, and hard drive space. It is up to you how you would like to file your documents, but most users begin with one master folder on their computer. For work you may title it Work. Then there are folders within the main folder, possibly titled by year: 2001, 2002, 2003. You would then scan your documents onto your computer and put them into their respective folders.

There are different types of scanners you can invest in for your digital filing needs. There are portable scanners, business card scanners or readers, or you can invest in a laptop scanner.

A business card reader or scanner is great for helping organize business cards you may have collected. There are two types of business card scanners. One scanner takes an electric snapshot of the business card and the other captures and arranges the information on the business card.

A portable scanner takes up less space and often has a faster reaction time. Time is important to business people, as a survey by SandHill found that around 50 percent of Information Technology workers chose to switch to cloud based applications because they performed faster.

A laptop scanner can be portable, but is not something you would often take with you. A laptop scanner is basically a scanner that can connect to your laptop.

A survey release by AIIM in February showed that a majority of the 882 survey participants believe that paper documents are necessary for legal reasons. While a paperless world is ideal, it is not yet attainable.